But what’s worse than a monkey running around your back yard? A business owner that is letting monkeys market his business.

Don’t let some monkey run your marketing campaign, telling you that you need to be on the radio, on billboards or even on the side of the Metro.  Where you need to be is on page one of Google for your main search term.

And there’s only one guy in Saint Louis that can do that – me.

I’m the number one SEO in Saint Louis (Search Engine Optimization) guy for a reason – because I get your business to the top of Google, Yahoo!, Bing and many other search engines.

Don’t waste any more money on untargeted shotgun marketing schemes.  Get that monkey out of your neighborhood and hire someone that can get you targeted traffic that’s ready to buy.

In the 80s I was warming up to a Vic 20, then Commodore 64 and Apple IIe. But now I use a badass Dell laptop, widescreen monitor and high speed Internet connection. The 80′s are fun to look at and reminisce about but I’ve moved on.

Unfortunately, many businesses haven’t.

Take Furniture Traditions, a highly respected furniture manufacturer out of California. These guys make some high end solid wood furniture that most anyone would love to own. But they’re stuck in the 80s.

Check out this page about their Internet Sales Policy.

When I first saw this, I couldn’t believe it.  If you’ve read my open letter to manufacturers you’d see several immediate problems with their ‘policy’.

The biggest problem I have with this is that they are restricting their own dealers that want to sell online.  They put down the Internet as a big bad thing that will hurt you and steal your milk money.

You Gotta See It to Believe It

First, none of us here at the factory would ever buy bedroom furniture over the internet. Why? Furniture is a product that must be seen in person to really understand what you are getting. The quality of the wood, finish and construction must be seen and touched to understand and appreciate the purchase.

Sure, ten years ago everyone was afraid to buy things online.  Beyond just eBay scams, people were afraid that their credit card numberss were going to get stolen.  But nowadays things aren’t like they used to be.

You make a good product, right?  You are proud of what you build? And you’re a legit company, aren’t you?  Then why would you fend off a person who wants to buy your product sight-unseen?  (And in reality it’s not sight-unseen anyway. You’ve got pictures on your website.)  If you say the quality is good, and your dealer’s website says it’s good, then purchasers should have no need to “really understand what you are getting”.  Take their credit card and ship them their stuff.  End of story.

Shipping is the Devil

…any savings that you gain by buying direct would be lost because of the astronomical costs of small shipments.

Aren’t you shipping your items to your vendors around the country?  Are you shipping it to them for free? I didn’t think so.  So are you worried about the fact that you’d have items online that cost more because there would be double shipping?  If so, why not drop ship for your vendors?  What a great service that’d be.  You’d make more sales and dealers would enjoy the convenience.

We’ve Got Dealers to Help You! (but we’ve restricted what they can do)

You may think you are saving money on the internet, but your real costs will be much higher in the long term. We have a wonderful dealer network all over the country who would love to help you before, during and after the sale.

…

We have no authorized dealers selling over the internet. If you buy Furniture Traditions products over the internet, it is very possible that you are being ripped off. You may receive a copy of our line, or worse, receive nothing at all. Again, we do not permit our furniture to be sold over the internet.

Get With It

Here’s the big problem.  You’ve got this crappy policy because of your 80′s way of thinking.  You think no one would be crazy enough to buy over the Internet, yet you personally checked your bank balance online this morning.  And you’ve got a select group of dealers around the country who are dragging your company along into the 2000′s.

So you insult them with a “policy” that your Grandpa wrote.

Is the problem because you can’t control pricing if your stuff goes online? That’s easy – enforce MAPP pricing.  Is it that you think your brand will be watered down by being sold online? I got news for you – you’re either going to have to change your policy or watch your revenues fall.  A growing portion of your dealers want to be on the leading edge, and will simply drop you from their vendor list.

See, they realize that there’s an audience out there.  They’re putting their money into marketing your products. But you won’t play ball because you’re still in your 80′s coma.  And it’s time for you to come out.

I’d love to hear from someone at Furniture Traditions or any other business that won’t let their products be sold online about their point of view on this subject.

I heard this list on the radio earlier this morning, and the DJs had much the same sentiments that I expressed last week. They even mentioned that they used the phone books to start fires and as doorstops.

Here’s the full list:

#1.) Answering machines

#2.) Lickable stamps

#3.) Foldable maps

#4.) Cathode ray tube TVs

#5.) Incandescent light bulbs

#6.) Paying for pornography

#7.) Smoking in bars

#8.) Fax machines

#9.) Hydrox cookies

#10.) Cassette tapes

#11.) Floppy disks

#12.) Phone books

#13.) Polaroid photos

#14.) Bank deposit slips

#15.) Subway tokens

#16.) The Rolodex

New York Magazine

Many of you know that I do some web work on an Army contract several days a week in the Federal Center in downtown St. Louis.  Well, I make it a point to watch for the new phone books, which showed up around March 8th this year.  Because of the large amount of worker bees here (about 250), they wheel the phone books in on pallets and put them in the hallway.  Then the worker bees can just come by and grab a new book (and put their old one in a recycle bin).

This year, I kept tabs on the amount of phone books.  Over the period of 38 days, about 16 phone books were taken from the pallet of 200.

Sixteen books.

Just for giggles, I visited a few of the other floors in the building to see how many phone books were still sitting around.  Every floor (except for the IRS area) had about the same amount of books remaining on their pallets.

They finally wheeled them out yesterday. I hope they went to a recycling center somewhere.

Mr. Small Business owner, what does this tell you about the future of Yellow Page advertising?  Are you still spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on YP ads?  Your audience is shrinking, and your money is being wasted.

I have a few clients who are ahead of the curve when it comes to Internet Marketing.  They recognized the poor use of their marketing budgets with YP and have since scaled back their spending on these sources, and have put that money into building their online presence through blogging and link building.  They are reaping huge harvests on their well-placed seeds.

I’m not saying to drop your YP ad.  In fact, I think it’s still a viable source of traffic, particularly if your target audience is over the age of 50.  But I am saying don’t put so much money into it any more.  A simple ad with your company name, phone number and URL is all you need.

Shameless Plug: Quit wasting money on dying forms of marketing/advertising. Put that money into hiring someone (like me) that will help your business continue to grow and thrive. Create a presence and a following online, provide outstanding customer service, and the customers will come.

If I helped your business grow in 2008, I can’t wait to make it even bigger in 2009.  If not, that’s ok too.  I hope that this blog has shown you ways to create new revenue streams and programming shortcuts that will take your business to a new level.

Now, what are you going to do in 2009? Add video or perhaps a blog? Start a link building campaign? Did you just test the SEO surface waters and realize the potential?  The economy isn’t going to stay in the dumps forever, are you positioning your company to be way ahead of the bigger players in your industry when money once again flourishes?

Have you looked at your 2008 data and researched what worked and what didn’t? Where can you apply Pareto’s Law to reduce and refine?  What areas of your business can be trimmed and/or removed?  Should you expand or simply reroute?

What new marketing ideas do you have in store for 2009?  Giveaways? Video? PPC? New domains and websites? Expansion into new areas? Leveraging your newfound Internet traffic for better vendor pricing?  Will you pursue an affiliate program? Can other local businesses help yours grow? Can you join a group that will promote your business? Could you hold an event that will get you media exposure? Can you advertise in local papers or websites cheaply? Will social networking be a part of your plan?

And of course, money. What are your goals for next year? How about monthly? Can you compare to the past and forecast? How much can you make? How much can you save? How much will you have to put into untapped (and potentially lucrative) revenue streams?

And lastly, what would you like to be forecasting for 2010? If this were December 30, 2009, what would you like to be thinking about? What goals will you be setting then?

Make it happen.

How will this affect SEO?

Personally I think it’ll have a bigger effect on very large and high-volume websites such as travel sites, news sites, etc. Smaller-trafficked websites probably won’t see much of a change IMO.

Look at it this way. If you are creating quality content for your customers, and you are doing it all honestly, not spamming, not keyword stuffing, not cloaking, etc, you’ll probably be fine. People will come to your website, see what they were looking for, and have no reason to vote you down.

If, on the other hand, you’re running an affiliate poker or viagra website, be prepared to see your rankings tumble for these custom users. That is, unless you’re providing quality content. Have I mentioned quality content yet?

Keep in mind that at this time, Google is not using these modifications for their ‘normal’ search that John Doe off the street would use. This only changes the results if you are logged into your Google account, and you do a search. Voting up your favorite websites won’t affect the overall organic results (at this time, according to G), so don’t waste time voting up your own website to the top of every possible keyword. You’ll just have skewed results that you can then fool yourself into believing are really organic.

While some people are saying this will have a major impact on search overall, I don’t see it happening yet. Now, will Google at some point take this data and use it towards their algorithm? Very possible. We’ll have to wait and see.